


Growing Up is Optional

by Lavellington



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Lesbians yay, Original Character(s), Original Female Character - Freeform, Romance, silliness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 07:04:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4010401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavellington/pseuds/Lavellington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're just a couple of kids in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I'm essentially ignoring the Captain Holt stuff that happened at the end of season two because I'm just not emotionally ready to deal with it, and it'll probably be retconned one episode into season three anyway. Here is some Jake and Amy fluff. Because I love them. 
> 
> Unbetaed, so all mistakes are mine, and I'm not American, so bear with me if you find "colour" with a "u" or any other such grievous errors.

On Thursday nights, Jake stays over at Amy's apartment. There are a few reasons for this:

1\. Jake's apartment is embarrassing to a degree inversely proportional to its size, and he hasn't vacuumed since before his stint as a badass undercover FBI agent;  
2\. Although Jake's been to Amy's apartment before, he never really got beyond watching her TV, raiding her fridge and mocking her doilies, but now he gets to see her ladythings;  
3\. Amy has a flatscreen TV and a well-stocked fridge, and the doilies are still hilarious.

On this particular Friday, he wakes up early, wriggles expertly out of bed without waking Amy, and starts poking through her DVD collection.  
He has known Santiago for so long, it seems a bit ridiculous to do this: He already knows her three favorite cop movies in order, knows that despite her repeated denials, she is nursing a secret passion for Die Hard (otherwise this relationship would be doomed anyway), knows how she takes her coffee and what shirt she wears when she wants to make a good impression, knows her worst ever date and favorite high school teacher (Dr. Robert Daniels, DDS, and Ms. Palmer, English Lit, respectively). 

The thing is, he acquired all this knowledge without even really trying, through years of friendship and partnership and stakeouts and exhausted nights drinking Scully's coffee in the breakroom. This, in his opinion, is their relationship's greatest strength. They were friends first, and they already knew and liked each other before they started dating, which puts them on firmer ground than pretty much any relationship Jake's ever had. But he's not stupid, and he knows that you can't just trip and fall into something this awesome and expect it to all work out. He needs to make an effort, so with the best of intentions, he continues to rifle through his maybe-girlfriend's personal possessions.

He's not surprised by what he finds in her DVD collection, for the most part: Smart action movies and psychological thrillers. The Coen Brothers, Tarantino, Silence of the Lambs, some soft sci-fi. A few comedies and a couple of chick flicks, the Harry Potter collection, and a bunch of embarrassing Chevy Chase movies, because Santiago refuses to accept that he hasn't done anything good since Caddyshack. There are some Spanish movies he hasn't heard of - Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, Oriol Paulo. He types them into his phone to research later and moves on to the bookcase. 

This is where she loses him - Jake thinks he has pretty good taste in movies, but he might be somewhat of a slouch in the literature department. It's not that he doesn't read - he's read over 16 and a half books, thank you very much, Santiago - it's just that between working as a badass detective and having a totally awesome social life (mostly in the bar across the street from work, he can admit), he's not really abreast of the latest New York Times bestsellers. He squints at some of the titles, trying to find something familiar, and picks up one with a bookmark about halfway through. It's called _Oscar and Lucinda_ , and has a picture of a woman in an old-timey, giant dress on the cover. This is probably not his scene. He skims the back and sees the words "historical" and "romance", confirming his suspicions. 

He's flicking through the book, laughing at words like "Papa" and "hence", when he hears a sleepy "Hey" behind him. He turns and sees Amy, wearing an old NYPD t-shirt, grey sweatpants, and her hilariously giant glasses, and looking like pretty much the most disgustingly cute thing ever.

"Hey," he says, feeling himself smiling wide, and instinctively moving to meet her in the middle of the living room. She's still all warm and sleepy and clings to him when he puts his arms around her, although she cringes away when he tries to kiss her. 

"I haven't brushed yet," she says, burying her face in his shoulder.

"Oh, you bad girl," he murmurs, twisting his neck to kiss her as she laughs and hits him weakly. 

"What are you doing?" she tries to turn and look at the book he's still holding without letting go of his waist and he strokes her hair like a lovestruck sap, because apparently he's this guy now, and he's surprisingly okay with it. 

"Rifling through your personal possessions," he says, holding the book up. "Don't you have a dress just like this?"

She looks at the cover. "Yeah, except mine has more of a 90s Bat Mitzvah vibe. And a bow on the ass."

"Wait, wait, wait-" he holds her at arm's length to look seriously into her comically bespectacled eyes. "You still have that? Santiago, you've been holding out on me."

She grins in that delighted, mischievous way she always does when he calls her Santiago in intimate situations, surpassed in sexiness only by that one time he called her _Captain_ Santiago in bed, and she went _crazy_ , because Jake has the best ideas. 

"Maybe if you're really good," she says, "I can wear it later."

"Be still my pre-teen, Jewish heart," he says and kisses her again.

"But if you call me Jenny," she whispers, inches from his mouth, "I'm gonna break your arm."

Jake's the luckiest guy alive.

*

"Why were you looking at my books, anyway?" she asks, as they're having coffee in the breakroom later. 

"I was interested," he says. "I'm interested in books."

She raises an eyebrow at him. "You mean other than testosterone-filled accounts of 1970s police brutality?"

He winces. That one's still kind of a sore spot.

"Sorry," she says instantly, putting her hand on his arm. "Idiot."

"Apology accepted," he says, adding cream to his coffee. "Insult ignored."

She shakes her head, smiling into her coffee.

"Anyway," he says, "I'm totally a well-read guy. I even took an English Lit class in college."

"Mmm hmm," she says. "What was it called?"

"The female form in contemporary erotic literature."

She laughs.

"I thought it was code for 'Booby Appreciation', " he confesses. "Turns out I was the only guy in the class, and most of the girls there thought I was a sexually frustrated moron."

"Only most of them?"

"There was this one girl who was really cool," he says, reminiscing. "Marianne. We bonded over our shared appreciation of boobies. I still talk to her sometimes. She now writes erotic lesbian novels under the pen name Dr Nymaphadora Davenport."

Santiago blinks. "That's the least sexy name I've ever heard."

"Well, she lives in a studio apartment in Manhattan and vacations in Aspen, so apparently her readers disagree."

She laughs again.

"I have to hand it to you, Peralta," she says, "you really meet the most interesting people."

Jake tries not to do something cheesy like say "I know" while gazing into Santiago's eyes, because he's not ready to be _that_ guy just yet, and then suddenly he has another Really Good Idea. 

 

*

He calls Marianne when he gets home from work that night, which is not only a Great Idea, but another perfectly valid reason to put off vacuuming. She answers on the third ring and says, 

"Jake Peralta, if you're calling to ask me to write a Die Hard inspired lesbian erotica novel, the answer is - as always - no."

Jake grins. "Hey, the world needs more erotic cop stories. I think people underestimate our sexiness, as a profession. You can make a difference here, dude."

"I'll think about it," she laughs, and Jake imagines her, wearing her sexy cat eye glasses and eating her favorite greasy Chinese takeout in her giant apartment. Marianne was always a class act, but she can put away more takeout and crappy beer than most of the guys Jake went to the Academy with. It's enough to bring her personal trainer, personal shopper, and personal chef to tears. Jake thinks she's awesome.

"So I need some advice about women," he says. "And literature. I figured you were the person to call."

"Your latest hopeless crush is on an English major?"

"My new _girlfriend_ is a detective who has slightly more enlightened taste in literature than me."

"So, you want to impress her?"

"I guess you could put it that way, if you were actively trying to embarrass me."

"Oh Jakey, " Marianne says because she _knows_ he hates it, "You're easier to embarrass than my Irish Catholic grandmother."

"So I was thinking," Jake says loudly, ploughing on past the abuse, "we could have coffee, catch up, and you could ridicule me in person."

"You're on," she says. "But only if I get to meet this girl afterwards. I promise I'll be good."

Jake snorts. 

"Don't lie to me, please. I am a highly trained detective."

He spends that evening googling all the book and movie titles he took down in Amy's apartment, and constructing a new persona for himself: Marshall Perceval (the third), well-read and debonair man about town. By the time he falls asleep at 2am, the backstory is coming along nicely.


	2. Chapter 2

Amy really likes Thursdays.

Since she and Jake have only just started this new "thing" that she's not quite ready to label a "relationship" just yet, he only stays over once a week. Okay, so sometimes on weekends as well (okay, so _most_ weekends) - but only one weeknight. This makes Thursdays special. She looks forward to them. But she likes the other days of the week too.

On the other days, Amy's time is her own, and she can read a book, or clean the apartment, or cook something nutritious, or any one of the thousand and one things she never seems to get around to when Jake comes over. This personal time is important to her, partly because she can give free rein to her tendency to freak out just a little over socks strewn on the floor, and dirty glasses not immediately put in the dishwasher - but mostly because it gives her some time and space to reassure herself that she is not turning into a giggly teenage girl over Jake "I Eat Danger and Gummy Bears for Breakfast" Peralta. She is not. She's just enjoying the beginning of the... thing. The relationship-esque thing that they have going.

Today is a Wednesday, and Amy is enjoying her alone time.

She peeks over the top of her book for the fourteenth time in the last hour to see if she has a new text message. She doesn't. She resolutely goes back to her book.

It's not that she and Jake text constantly - they don't actually text much more than they used to before, which is probably yet another sign that this whole dating thing was a long time coming. It's just that if she texts him, he usually texts her back within 15 minutes or so. She hadn't really realised that she'd come to expect such a prompt response from him until about an hour ago, when she realised it had been 20 minutes since she'd texted him saying _Should I have mac and cheese or chicken and green salad?_ and he hadn't texted back with an all-caps ode to the amazingness of mac and cheese, or a mini-essay explaining why salad is the Hans Gruber of the food world. She'd been planning on having the salad anyway, and possibly sending Jake a selfie of the most obnoxious lettuce eating she could muster, but he hadn't responded. She'd eaten her salad feeling weird and feeling annoyed with herself for feeling weird, and then, in a giant _screw you_ to the universe, had a glass of wine and some dark chocolate after dinner. 

She glances at her phone again, and abruptly realises she has no idea what book she's holding.

*

She and Jake had sort of (drunkenly) kissed once before all this business, although she's not sure if he even remembers it. She'd only been at the precinct a few days, and was still feeling simultaneously reassured and intimidated by the rough, noisy bonhomie of the nine-nine, so reminiscent of growing up the youngest of eight, tumbled from brother to brother for Star Trek marathons and ragtag baseball games. 

She is reassured by Peralta, and likes him, secretly, under her thin veil of disapproval. Even though she is essentially the new kid, Peralta invites her along to the bar after work for Boyle's "Congratulations on Your Divorce, Now Get An Apartment" party, telling her solemnly that attendance is mandatory for all nine-nine detectives. 

"I wouldn't want you to write me up my first week," she says, as seriously as she can manage considering she'd heard Peralta on the phone not five minutes ago confirming delivery of a dozen Fake Titty Aprons. Peralta's attitude to this whole thing seems terrible on the surface of it - he's treating it more like a bachelor party than anything - but she saw him talking to Boyle in the break room earlier, saw him grip Boyle's shoulder and shake him slightly before giving him a rough, affectionate hug, and she didn't miss the way Boyle's shoulders perked up slightly, the way he walked back to his desk with more swagger than he'd been able to muster twenty minutes earlier. These guys are friends - real friends - and Peralta obviously knows what he's doing.

So she goes along.

She's never met Charles' wife, and she mostly knows Charles himself as the sweet, overly earnest guy with a lot of paperwork and an enthusiasm bordering on the freakish for toasted sandwiches.

It's kind of awkward when he sits next to her at the bar, and even more so when he starts talking about his ex-wife.

"She was really beautiful," Charles is saying, eating a pig in the blanket from a pile of frankly alarming size on a paper plate in front of them. He offers one to Amy, who politely declines. 

"Her lips were slim, and decisive, like a beautiful... fish. Fish on her face," Charles says, swallowing a pig in blanket after only two chews. "A sardine," he clarifies, saying 'sardine' like it has three 's's and spraying Amy with pastry crumbs.

"That's... nice," Amy says, nursing her beer. She kind of wants to go home, but she feels sorry for Boyle. "I'm sorry it didn't work out for you two."

He shrugs, looking sober for a minute. "Sometimes," he says, "I'm sorry too. Actually, pretty much most of the time. But when something's over, it's over. We'll both be better off this way."

After a while, Sergeant Jeffords offers to escort Charles home, since it's on his way, and Jake and Amy watch from the kerb while the two of them pile into a cab, Charles clinging to the Sergeant's shoulder and promising to bring him homemade yoghurt on Monday. Jake smacks the roof of the cab and it roars off.

"Well," Amy says. "That was... interesting." She immediately cringes at her own tone - she hadn't meant to sound judgemental, or snooty, but somehow she comes off that way about 80% of the time anyway, especially with colleagues and new acquaintances, and especially when she's been drinking. She has a graph.

Jake doesn't seem to mind, turning to grin at her in that wide, genuine way he has.

"That's us," he says. "One big, dysfunctional, multi-ethnic, semi-incestuous family."

Amy laughs despite herself. She feels that this will possibly become a defining aspect of her partnership with Peralta - laughing against her better judgement. It feels surprisingly comfortable.

"Wait," she says, her slightly fuzzy brain catching up to the implication. "Incestuous? So who's..?" she waggles her eyebrows suggestively, making herself feel a little dizzy, "with who?"

Jake raises his own eyebrows at her. "Detective Santiago, I would never gossip about my co workers in that manner. And I _think_ you mean "with _whom_ "."

She laughs again, slumping half against him and half against the brick wall. He maintains a severe, schoolteacher expression for about five seconds before he gives in and starts laughing too. Amy leans her head against his shoulder, feeling the nerves and tension of her first week in a new precinct fade into the background for the moment. 

"Was it you and Gina?" she asks, after a moment, and Peralta sputters incoherently, dislodging her head as he turns to face her. 

"That's _disgusting_ ," he says, looking genuinely dismayed. "I've known Gina my whole life - she's like a sister to me. A terrifying, borderline sociopathic sister."

"You don't have any actual sisters, then?" she asks, noting how close his face is suddenly, but not all that motivated to do anything about it. 

"Hmm?" he looks distracted. "Oh - uh, no. Nope, just me. Classic only child." He grins, not quite the bright one of earlier. "You?"

"Seven brothers," she says, and he looks horrified, as she'd known he would. "Oh my _God_ ," he says. "That explains why you're so competitive."

She snorts and hits him on the arm. "I'm not the one who just challenged half the bar to a dance-off." 

She inches closer to him. She can feel his breath. He smiles at her in the dim light.

"You love my moves," he says, and leans in to brush his lips against hers.

*

Amy wakes with a start and realises that she's fallen asleep on the couch after her one glass of wine - Good one, Amy - and it's now ten thirty. She squints at her phone, which is blinking at her obnoxiously. When she picks it up, she sees she has six messages from Jake, almost all of which concern mac and cheese, while the last one has a picture of a suspicious looking pigeon he "apprehended" on the way home.

 _The suspect escaped custody and fled the scene_ , he wrote, _but has known associates in the area who may be willing to aid our investigation_.

As she squints fondly at it, her phone buzzes again and she opens the new message to see a blurry picture of what appears to be a pretty pissed off squirrel. She laughs out loud.

Maybe she is a little teenage when she's with Jake, she thinks, struggling off of her couch to go and brush her teeth.

She leaves the wine glass to clean up in the morning.


End file.
